Shakespeare meets CATS

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Be paid $70,000 a year to do WHAT?

If sitting in a "rubber room" is what being a teacher potentially has in store for me SIGN ME UP.

The state of the American education system is absolutely appalling. For reasons unbeknownst to me, the objective seems to be less and less about teaching our children to deal with real life situations and more about quantifying their education and making those false numerical values go as high as possible because they'll bring money from the government. I mean, I know my teachers always told me that education is an investment, but I didn't realize they meant it because the act of educating children has become a business.

I wasn't in high school that long ago, and I can honestly say that the state testing performed on a yearly basis has become the biggest hindrance to learning in the classroom. Besides the fact it was nearly impossible to get ANY help with my Calculus homework at certain points in the year because of state testing for Algebra, the pressure on the educators to deomonstrate improvement (as opposed to success with the resources they've been given) has forced many teachers to focus only on the students whose success is attached to more government money. And in my experience, the students in this category would rather be texting, or even on house arrest, than putting any effort into their education.

Does anyone else see the problem with this? And while many parents fix this problem by sending their kids to expensive private or charter schools where they could get extensive college prep classes, many of my peers and I had to FIND other ways to be competitive applicants to colleges who could easily take in other students that have anywhere from 10 to 20 AP credits built up.

How did we do it? If the realization that being a productive, altruistic contributer to society is more important than a GPA never quite sinks in, then cheating is one way. I will admit that none of the people I knew ever resorted to this, which would only represent a very small, specifically moral cross-section of a student population. No, the popular method of coping is what is commonly referred to as "grade grubbing."

I can't tell you how many times I overheard students in Honors classes arguing with teachers for over half an hour while going over a test, hounding them at the door over a grade in the B, B+ range. This was particularly popular in my AP Calculus class, which incidentally was DENSLY overpopulated because a large number of the math teachers were teaching Algebra and other classes required to take the dreaded HSA's (High School Assessments--like changing its name from test to assessment has any visible effect.) The kids that were (un)affectionately referred to as "grade Nazis," including by themselves, were all too commonly seen on the computers all over the building checking their grades. If they could hit up at least two teachers about that reading assignment, that homework grade, that presentation before they had to catch the bus, it was a productive day. And the sad part is that I can as good as promise you that they were on Grades-to-Go again the second they got home.

And what exactly does all of this lead to? Kids getting better grades than they deserved for the sake of getting rid of certain students, or even wishful thinking on the part of some educators for others--"if I will just give her an A, she'll believe she can actually do this."

But the fundamental premise of learning is that a person acquires the ability to be exposed to information and is able to retain it and apply it. The problem with the American education system is that it doles out plenty of information to use on a test, but those tests don't actually prepare anyone for real life.

And with a lot of universities taking action to their own hands by deciding to cut back on the number of A's their institutions hand out (this article from the Washington Post can back that up for me), I really hope that eventually public education will follow suit and do the same.

But with a certain Taxman in office, I don't see how that could possibly happen any time soon... yes, I did just create a parallel between Obama and the Beatles song. Tax collector/ super hero. Someone make the man some Underoos!

OK, so maybe I'm the only one who thinks it's funny. And true. We can't forget true. But perhaps I should be nice. I mean, Iranian elections are more important that our broken education system right?

Right?

Cultivate the Word Nerd

Couple of links I've had sloshing around in my brain juices for a while...

*Pause to let mental image seep in*

(Eww)

At any rate, the first is Wordle. Paste text or a URL and all of the words from either will be arranged in a colorful, customizable arrangement. I made a Twitter background out of mine. Check it out.

Second is something ESPECIALLY awesome. Literature Map is a site where you enter an author's name and authors that are similar will pop up in a virtual web that you can click on and find other authors. Similar to the Visuwords dictionary.

Yay for cultivating the inner Word Nerd.

Sometimes people can be SO cool

Had a patient come into work yesterday using a crutch and say "She said you'd make me look like Dr. House by Friday--using a cane and eating Vicodin."

It was so amazing I told myself to commit it to memory FOREVER!

Stupidity abounds!

Finally found it with English subtitles!

Who knew it could pay to be literal?

I hate Lord of the Flies too!